It seems like stuff is always getting on the carpet... dirt,
dust, food, cat puke, etc. What with our busy lifestyles,
who has time to vacuum or shampoo the carpteing on a
daily basis? Yet the debris accumulates on the carpet
daily...

Well here's the solution! The self cleaning carpet
works like
this: The carpeting itself has millions of tiny holes between
the carpet fibers. There are also sensors in the fibers of
the carpet that let the mechanism know when something
has been spilled on the carpet and needs to be removed.

A special padding is laid under the carpet. This padding is
also very porous. Within it is a vacuum mechanism that
sucks the dirt/soil/etc. down through the carpet and into
the padding. The padding is treated with special enzymes
that break down and dissolve the carpet soil. Thus leaving
you with a clean, sanitary carpet!

What you need is carpet on a roller, so you can wind out a fresh section after a party- kinda like those continuous cloth hand towel holders in public restrooms.. Get to the end of the roll and take it to the cleaners.. or just put it on backwards, like the Lucky Star Palace does

If you start out with a painted cement floor, every once in a while you could roll out some kind of semi-disposable terry-cloth covering. Or, someone could invent a carpet that you can crumple up and throw in the washer once in a while, with a sacrificial pad underneath. Yeah, what c said seems like a good idear to me.

FarmerJohn: Oh, what genius ! Why don't you combine it with your truly outstanding and brilliant "lightning barbequeue" idea ? Just hook up a great big lighting rod to your house, and every time there's a thunderstorm, lead the lightning down onto that dirty carpet and just fry all those pesky stains to a crisp ? So easy ... so quick .... so simple ..... but oh, soooo long to clean up afterwards .... (bitter bitter bitter bitter, I've had to junk that shirt, you b@st@rd, the stains wouldn't was out, and it was nearly new too, bitter bitter bitter.

Ahem.

Aurora, I like your idea, but how do you dry the carpet afterwards ? Is the cleaning agent solvent based, or could you put heating wires in the backing, like an electric blanket ?

Hint: when it comes to electricity, don't take any advice from FarmerJohn.

Two layer implementation of this idea:
outer layer replaceable made of rods that turn over and are cleaned by air/water in lower layer.
Bottom layer: dust catching/or thin liquid layer.
Air pulls through to second layer, which is washable or disposable, without affecting upper layer.

Air Cooling/warming version:
Air circulated from floor is cooler (floor is usually cool) and if there is a water layer, all the more so.

Simply filter the air and recycle it into the room.
You get an air cooler/purifier rug.

Last but not least, tiny refrigeration units could be set along the floor to catch energy, for cooling, pumping the heat outside the room and recycling the COLD (not just cool) clean air back into the room from ducts.
For heat, reverse the direction of heat flow.